Indiana University Northwest will honor 762 graduating students and Nobel Laureate and Gary native, Joseph Stiglitz during its Commencement exercises at the Genesis Center in Gary on Thursday, May 13 at 6 p.m. This marks the second year for the IU Northwest Commencement ceremony at Gary's Genesis Center.

IU Northwest Chancellor Bruce W. Bergland will preside over the ceremony along with newly installed IU President Adam W. Herbert to confer degrees. Degree recipients include December 2003 graduates and candidates for May and August 2004. This number also includes graduate students whose degrees have been or will be awarded during the 2003-04 academic year.

Stiglitz, professor of finance and economics at Columbia University, will be honored with the Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree during the commencement ceremony. Stiglitz will also give a presentation titled, "Adapting to Globalization," at 3 p.m. in the Savannah Center Auditorium. A public reception, to be held in his honor, will precede the presentation at 2 p.m. in the Savannah Center Lobby. These events are free and open to the public.

Stiglitz forever changed how the world understands economics through pioneering two branches of economic theory ó economics of information and development economics. Economics of information is a branch of economics that examines the information that particular individuals might possess when entering into any transaction. While traditional economic models assumed that all parties maintained ideal and complete knowledge in a transaction, Stiglitz recognized that real market economies feature myriad imperfections that can have immense economic consequences. Many of his subsequent papers on the subject examine such "asymmetries of information," or conditions in which some parties know more than others.

"I cannot help but believe that his years in Gary helped shape his approach to economics and his interest in economic policy. He saw firsthand the implications of heavy industry domination of a local economy and the effects, both positive and negative, that suburbanization could have on a community.

These opportunities, I think it is clear, have informed his interest in expanded educational opportunities within the United States and also as a development strategy worldwide and in the importance of environmental protection," said Don Coffin, Ph.D., professor of economics at IU Northwest.

Stiglitz was born in Gary in 1943 and attended the cityís public schools through graduation as class valedictorian from Horace Mann High School. He received his bachelorís degree from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1964 then earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967.

While in graduate school he also studied at Cambridge University, earning a Fulbright scholarship and being named a Tapp Junior Research Fellow. He then became an assistant professor of economics at Yale University, where he earned tenure at the age of 27.

A Nobel Laureate and member of the National Academy of Science, Stiglitz has served as chair of the Presidentís Council of Economic Advisors; chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank; and professor of economics at Yale, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford and Columbia Universities.

Of the eight Indiana University campuses, 15,639 graduates will be eligible to receive IU degrees and 1,786 will be eligible to receive Purdue degrees. This year, the university's commencement week will start in Bloomington on May 8 and conclude at IU East on May 14. For more information, please contact IU Northwest's Division of University Advancement at (219) 980-6800.